6846 - Charities

[scottobear]

I just heard the following quote:

"If we had paid no more attention to our plants than we have to our children, we would now be living in a jungle of weed."

--Luther Burbank, (1849-1926), American Naturalist

I'm curious about charities, and how people help one another lately.

My thing is giving blood, and doing the job I do... that's where I get the majority of my fulfillment from doing good works.

I'm curious... what do people who read my journal do to make the world a better place?

I know I have a few really nice folks that stop by. Its fun to interact with everyone, and I've learned quite a lot from people that are (amongst other things) parents, naturalists, social workers and teachers.

If you see this, and you're of a mind, let me know about what you might've done to help make the world a better place. Do you volunteer your time? Give money to an organization? If you're shy about that sort of stuff, feel free to post anonymously (I'll unscreen anony entries, once I'm sure they're not spam). I'm looking to see what manner of bases are typically covered.

Some of the big ones in my immediate vicinity seem to be:

Hurricane Relief
The Homeless
AIDS
Cancer
Missing Kids
Battered / Abused Women & Children
The Environment
Animal Welfare
The Hungry people overseas
Planned Parenthood

Something I rarely hear about anymore is Zero Population growth... is that viewed as selfish, these days?

Comments

[scottobear.livejournal.com]

MmMm.. soup! Now that's a way to make a difference.

you're right.. there's something very empowering about helping someone to take care of themselves.. just giving them a jump-start.

[anony-moos.livejournal.com]

oh i forgot - a coupel of years ago i abseiled off the top of the local college for the RNIB. not because I have some affinity with blind people, but to prove a point - because I'm shit scared of heights and it was about 80 feet!

[scottobear.livejournal.com]

What's the rnib... and what's abseiling?

[anony-moos.livejournal.com]

Royal National Institution for the Blind.
Abseiling is... well you wear a harness and some rope, and stand on top of a building (or cliff top) and go backwards over it. You sort of walk backwards down the wall. the scariest part is, in order to move downwards at all, you have to basically let go of the rope that's going through your harness, and let it run through your fingers.
I had massive bruises on my waist afterwards, from where all my body weight was hanging off this harness around me waist. You have to keep your body at 90 degrees to the building, or it all goes a bit wrong and you end up breaking your nose! It was a wicked experience.
They do things like that all the time - parachute jumps, all sorts...

[scottobear.livejournal.com]

ah, that makes sense... abseiling sounds fun! sort of secret-agenty.

[anony-moos.livejournal.com]

haha! It would have been really secret-agently -- if I hadn't been pooing my pants the whole time!!!

[scottobear.livejournal.com]

hee. Well, I'm sure some agents get spooked on the first mission.

[anony-moos.livejournal.com]

something I found really "nice" (for want of a better word) was an Italian lady on my friends page, who has just moved to the UK. She wasn't having much luck finding a jo, so she volunteered to work in a charity shop until she found work. I thought that was really nice, and a lot of people could follow her example.

[scottobear.livejournal.com]

that's a great solution to a problem!

wow, if you got the whole unemployed work force to volunteer, you could move mountains!